Golden Tears
by justaclassicgirl
Summary: "Hermione knew she would have to face the horde of angry Weasleys eventually, but as she stood on the edge of the forest, watching the sun sink over the brown hills of Britain, she wished she would never have to go back. It was so beautiful here. Quiet, peaceful, serene." Hermione has done something no one expected. Now, she just wants a place to collect her thoughts. Ron bashing.


Oh my god, my first NOT Harry/Hermione HP fanfiction! :O

It's sad, actually, this story. I just finished a sad book, so I'm kind of in a sad mood. When I started it, I had a different idea for the ending, but after finishing the book, I completely forgot the happy ending and settled for _this_ angsty mess.

The sad music I'm listening to can't help either.

This story is loosely based on the song "Love Love Love" by Of Monsters And Men, which has been on my iPod on repeat for who knows how long.

~justaclassicgirl

* * *

It was a crisp, cool fall day. Hermione Granger's favorite season. She loved everything about fall.

She loved the sounds of the dry leaves and their stems crunching underfoot as she continued her walk.

_Scrunch, crackle, snap._

She loved snuggling up in large sweaters, she loved drinking warm cinnamon-y tea, she loved pumpkin pie with extra whipped cream on top, she loved Halloween, and she loved most of all Thanksgiving with Harry and the Weasley family.

Or rather, she _had_ loved Thanksgiving with Harry and the Weasley family, until this one.

But Hermione didn't want to think about that right now.

She shook her head and gazed up instead at the warm-colored treetops, the light of the sunset filtering through what leaves were left on the trees and causing everything to swim together in a large honey-caramel-scarlet streaked mess before her eyes. The pretty color combination reflected back off of her irises.

Hermione smiled as the brilliantly colored leaves floated down from the trees, detached by a soft puff of autumn air, twirling and swirling slowly on their journey to the ground. They enveloped her like a slow-motion tornado of red, orange, and yellow, with some brown stuck in there.

Hermione let a laugh escape her mouth, and she twirled around childishly. There was a sense of innocence flitting about her like a tiny fairy, the kind that only comes to children in dreams. It made her feel like everything was right with the world and her boyfriend hadn't just proposed to her and she hadn't just declined.

And, of course, as much as she had tried to suppress them, the thoughts of it came rushing into her brain and made themselves at home. So she accepted it, for she knew they wouldn't go away if she kept trying to ignore them.

She wasn't in love with anyone else, as he had assumed. But she and Ron had only been dating for about three moths. Sure, they'd known each other for seven years, but being in a romantic relationship with him was not that different than being in a strong friendship with him in which both parties cared for each other platonically. There was something missing, something that made her feel like the relationship was a bit dull.

Oh, except for the fighting.

Fighting, she had heard, was supposed to mean passion, and passion was supposed to be good in a relationship, But if passion meant yelling until her throat was sore, their flat rattling with the slamming of doors, nights on end crying in her room, and begging for forgiveness when she was not the one at fault just so she didn't lose him, then she didn't want it.

(She wasn't sure she loved him, either. One of their fights once stemmed from her reluctance to say she loved him. But to Hermione, love was a sacred word, and she couldn't just throw it around so casually like most people could. Ron, however, didn't seem to understand that, no matter how much she tried to explain it to him.)

So one could now see why, when he lowered his knee to the dusty floor of the Burrow, clicked open the small diamond ring, and asked her to commit to spending the rest of her life with him, she said no.

Hermione felt bad about it, in retrospect. The sadness in his bright blue eyes that came before the anger made her remember all the nights he had comforted her when she awoke with nightmares of the Final Battle, his gentle fingertips brushing across her face, wiping her tears away. But she couldn't. She just couldn't say yes.

She wouldn't make a commitment she couldn't keep.

Still, one could also see that a lot of "passion" was present in the dining room half an hour earlier.

Honestly, Hermione didn't want to be around any of them right now. Especially Ron.

Surprisingly, she didn't even want to talk to Harry, her best friend. Hermione just wanted to be alone.

She walked deeper into the beautiful forest, letting out a sad sigh. She watched as the sigh materialized in front of her in the form of a cloud, floating upwards in the cold fall air.

Oh, if only she could talk to her mother about this! She'd know just what to say. She always did.

But Ron hadn't wanted her to go to Australia to restore their memories just yet. He'd said she should wait until they were more settled into their relationship. Hermione said that it had already been months since the war ended and it was safe for them to come home, and that her parents didn't deserve to have waited this long. Ron replied that if she went to get her parents, he'd be long gone by the time she returned. And it was there that they'd had their biggest fight to date.

This was just last week.

Finally, Hermione realized just how exhausted she was of all of this, and sat down with a huff on a nearby tree stump. She buried her head in her hands and began to cry for the first time since she'd left the Burrow.

When she lifted her head, the light of the setting sun turned her tears to pure gold.

She stood up, fisted her hands, threw back her head and let out a vicious scream. The forest shook with fear.

It felt good.

* * *

Hermione knew she would have to face the horde of angry Weasleys eventually, but as she stood on the edge of the forest, watching the sun sink over the brown hills of Britain, she wished she would never have to go back. It was so beautiful here. Quiet, peaceful, serene.

Mystical.

Magical.

Another golden tear slipped down her cheek.

* * *

Hermione stood there and waited until the sun had finally disappeared. A dusky twilight began to settle over the forest as the sky darkened rapidly. Her tears turned to amethysts and sapphires.

Finally, resigned to her fate, she turned her back on the open fields and began her walk back to the Burrow through the foliage.

The forest was dead and cold and uninviting.

No more fairies or leaf tornadoes.

Only skeletons waving their arms in the breeze, high up and reaching for the sky, and silence.

* * *

:|

I have literally no response to that.

Okay, review it now! :D


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